Here are four anti-transgender videos that have been produced by Eric Miller of Advance America, one of several anti-gay and anti-transgender religious extremist lobbying organizations that have been around the Indiana Statehouse for nearly 30 years. Eric Miller has close relationships with many Republican lawmakers and for many years was influential in the Statehouse, helping write many laws and promoting anti-gay, anti-transgender, and HIV/AIDs hatred through a broad channel of Indiana religious organizations, including some religious extremists. Mr. Miller’s news letters are read from pulpits and transmitted through church bulletins around the state, and Advance America has a history of being able to mobilize busloads of church groups to anti-LGBT rallies in the statehouse.

These videos are designed to garner opposition to an LGBT civil rights bill in Indiana from Mr. Miller’s followers, and have been transmitted via email to Mr. Millers’ mailing list. Several reports have indicated that this anti-trans hate is being shared by churches to their congregations in electronic newsletters. They are modeled after the extremist rhetoric that was successful in demonizing transgender people in Houston, allowing people to overturn Houston’s Human Rights Ordinance.

Sneak Attack at the Indiana Statehouse

The video alleges that a LGBT Civil Rights Bill would be introduced on Indiana’s Organization Day on November 17, and would be pushed through the legislature and approved by both houses (the Sneak Attack) on November 17th in order to get the legislation passed before any opposition could oppose it. It also suggested that transgender men and women are sexual predators who are preying on women and children in public restrooms, and that an LGBT Civil Rights Bill would make it legal for transgender people to sexually assault children in restrooms and locker rooms.

Update on Sneak Attack at the Indiana Statehouse

This video is mostly an response to the angry reaction from Indiana GOP to the first “Sneak Attack” video.

Keep Men Out of Women’s Restrooms

A video that demonizes transgender women as sexual predators and child molesters, it suggests that current efforts to pass civil rights protections for LGBT Hoosiers will allow transgender people to attack children in public restrooms. Of course the civil rights bill has no bearing on public restrooms in any way – transgender women are allowed to use women’s restrooms and locker facilities today, and have been for decades.

Take Action to Protect Women and Children

A second video that uses the same scare tactics and fear-mongering around transgender people.

Facts about gender indentity and civil rights protections

Public accommodations are all the places we go between work, home and school. This includes movie theaters, restaurants, parks, public transportation, and coffee shops. Indiana law does not yet prohibit gender identity discrimination in any of those places.

Fact #2: No one has ever been assaulted by a transgender person in public restrooms. EVER.

Media Matters has done in-depth studies in cities and states where gender identity and expression are protected under civil rights laws, and have determined there have been no instances of anyone using those civil rights laws to engage in criminal activities.

Fact #3:Transgender women ARE NOT MEN! Also, transgender men are not women.

Fact #4:Transgender men and women can and do use the public restrooms and locker rooms that align with their appropriate gender today.

They have been for decades – as long as there have been transgender people (from the earliest human history) and as long as public restrooms have existed. If you have ever used a public restroom, you have been in one with a transgender person. You just didn’t realize it, because transgender people are there to use the facilities and leave without calling attention to themselves. Adding gender identity to the Indiana Civil Rights Laws will not suddenly result in more trans people using public restrooms, or changing how they use public restrooms today.

Fact #5:Transgender people are at much higher risk of being harassed and assaulted in public restrooms than non-trans people.Studies by the Transgender Law Center reveal that many transgender people report having been assaulted or harassed about using the public restrooms that align with their gender.

Fact #6:Male predators do not need a law granting them access to women’s rooms, they already do it now. They don’t dress up as women to do so, either – they simply walk in.

Fact #7:Denying Transgender people the right to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity PUTS MEN IN WOMEN’S RESTROOMS!
Burly, bearded trans men would suddenly appear in women’s restrooms because they were forced to use a restroom based on the gender they were assigned at birth.

Fact #8:Denying Transgender people the right to use gender aligned RESTROOMS puts WOMEN IN MEN’S RESTROOMS.
This gives male predators even easier access to violate women’s personal space, rights, and safety! However, the people who are running this campaign against Transgender protections don’t care about that. They object to our very existence. They just want to sow fear and violate our basic human rights.

Fact #9:SB100 puts EVERYONE – including non-trans people – in danger of being harassed for being in the “wrong” bathroom.
At least one cis woman has already been attacked by a self-appointed bathroom bouncer, a male security guard, who entered the women’s restroom (wait, isn’t that what these people want to prevent?). He violated her personal space and her right uncontested to use facilities aligned with her gender identity by slamming her against a wall and telling her something to the effect of ‘boys don’t belong in here’. Why? Because she didn’t conform to his, and possibly other people’s, expectations of what a woman should be. She is now suing FishBone Grill over the incident.